Double Agent

by Tom Bradby

  ‘You had to take the morning-after pill,’ he said, gesturing at the packet of sanitary towels on the seat beside her. ‘I remember you travelling home from the Dolomites with a bagful of them after that last night in the hotel.’

  ‘You have a good memory.’

  ‘For all the best moments. And there were a hell of a lot of them.’ He swirled the coffee in his mug. Kate was suddenly desperate for a cigarette, but they’d given up together at least a decade ago, and she was too proud to admit she’d fallen off the wagon.

  ‘Tell me honestly,’ he said, still staring into his drink. ‘Is there even the slightest chance you might one day forgive me, that we might . . . I don’t know, be friends, or . . .’ He trailed off, though she knew well enough what he was asking.

  ‘If you want to know if we can ever be a couple again, as we were, then the answer is no. You betrayed me and you know who I am, how I am. You understand why it matters so much to me, however black and white you might find it. But you’ll always mean something to me. Just in a different way now.’ It wasn’t the answer he’d hoped for, she knew, and he gazed disconsolately at the table, brushing his fingertips to and fro. ‘I can’t give you what you want. I can’t take back time, or change the passage of events. But I can see how bleak your life here is and I’d like to do something to ease it.’

  ‘Oh, yeah? And how are you going to manage that?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. The Service is quite happy to have you in Moscow. The last thing they would have wanted was to put you on trial. In time, when the way ahead is clearer, I think we can use that to our advantage.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I can make it an argument about the children’s welfare. They’ll never let you come back to the UK, but it is just about possible I could persuade them to turn a blind eye to you living somewhere else in Europe – in France, perhaps, or Spain, somewhere you can build a proper new life for yourself and the children can visit regularly.’

  There were tears in Stuart’s eyes now. He wiped them away brusquely. ‘I don’t deserve you, that’s for sure,’ he said.

  She reached out and put a hand over his. He slowly turned over the palm until their fingers were interlocked. ‘I can’t help, though, if you keep wanting to take it beyond friendship,’ she said, but she was aware as she did so that the finality of her words were at odds with the emotion coursing through her. She removed her hand.

  He wiped the tears from his cheeks. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you. I’m never going to forgive myself for what I did to you. Sometimes I think it would be easier to stay here and punish myself. I just don’t know what I was thinking. I must have been out of my mind.’

  They finished their coffee and sandwiches and hit the road again. Kate half expected Stuart to ask her to drive, but he seemed to expect to soldier on. The rain stopped and, once in a while, a few rays of evening sunshine glinted off the pooled water on the tarmac.

  And when they were finally swallowed by the night, Kate felt fatigue creep up on her until her head was lolling uncomfortably between the side of the seat and the cool glass of the window. At one point, Stuart reached over and put his sweater beneath her cheek. ‘Where are we?’ she asked.

  ‘Just beyond Tver,’ he replied, and then she drifted off again, a bleak, dreamless sleep, so that every time she was shaken awake, she felt more tired than she had been before.

  Kate was dimly aware of a petrol stop somewhere, but it was two in the morning when Stuart shook her properly awake again. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I can’t keep my eyes open and it’s getting a bit dangerous. I’m just going to grab a coffee and something more to eat. You want to stay here, or come in?’

  His arm rested easily on her shoulders. ‘I’ll come in,’ she said.

  The long, dark building was a no-frills café without the pretences of the previous diner. It had metal chairs and tables and a battered linoleum floor. A pretty, dark-haired girl leant against the counter and indicated they should take a seat. A much older man – perhaps her father – was asleep against the wall behind the bar.

  ‘What can I get you?’ she asked in English. Kate asked for coffee and something to eat in Russian. The girl gestured lazily at a counter along the far wall and Kate understood well enough: at this time in the morning, they weren’t going to get anyone to cook for them. Perhaps not at any time in the morning.

  Kate went to take a look. The breakfast spread ran to a selection of cold meats, cheeses and gherkins that looked as if they had been sitting there for ever. ‘Rather you than me,’ she reported back. But Stuart was made of sterner stuff. He returned with a plateful. She watched as he worked his way through it.

  ‘What have you been thinking about?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing.’ She certainly didn’t feel like admitting she’d been unable to get out of her mind the feel of his fingers locked in her own.

  ‘You’ve got something you want to get off your chest.’ He piled meat and cheese on to a slice of bread and took an enormous bite. He had never been an elegant eater. ‘That’s the advantage of having been married to someone for half a lifetime.’

  Kate weighed what she had been proposing to say. She wouldn’t have imagined it even an hour ago.

  ‘We’re almost there, so . . .’ he smiled at her ‘. . . speak now or forever hold your peace.’

  Intuitive as he was, he was not about to guess this. ‘What if I said there was a chance – a very, very slim one, but the glimmer of something at least – that I might be able to find my way back to how I felt before?’

  The colour drained from his face. The shock was palp able. ‘I’d do anything,’ he said, ‘absolutely anything you asked of me.’

  ‘It would require you to be honest about something. Completely honest. And I’d have to be certain you were telling the truth.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Even then, I’m not offering any guarantees. The road would be long and hard and we might not get there, but . . . it might open the door.’ He waited, spellbound by this unexpected turn of events. He scratched nervously at the stubble on his chin. His yearning for a second start was not in doubt. ‘I need to know what you told your handlers in Moscow.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Everything.’

  For a moment, she watched something – a flash of resentment, a warning, a moment of doubt – slip through his conscious mind before he faced her again with unalloyed eagerness, but whatever it was, it triggered a counterbalancing reaction in her own mind: was her offer real? Did she mean it? Was it even possible? Or was she just using him? Even she didn’t know the answer to that one.

  Kate took the plunge nevertheless. She nodded. He downed a last swig of his coffee and answered her. ‘I know it may not seem much, but I mostly talked to them about Imogen and British politics. They were interested in her ambitions, particularly in my take on whether she was ever going to realize them and, if so, how, when and why that might happen.’

  ‘Did you get the impression they wanted her to be promoted?’

  ‘They were careful never to ask leading questions. They just seemed genuinely interested in my views on the political scene.’

  ‘Did they ask for papers?’

  ‘Sometimes, yes. If I was on the circulation list for anything that was unusual or interesting, I’d hand it over. I was trying to keep them happy, you know . . .’

  ‘What did you tell them about the Service?’

  ‘Nothing.’ He was clearly aghast. ‘For God’s sake, Kate, I’d never have betrayed you like that.’ Kate was almost tempted to say that fucking their friend was a rather bigger betrayal, but this time she held her tongue.

  ‘They must have asked.’

  ‘They did, but I just said you never, ever talked about your work at home – which was true, most of the time.’

  ‘Did they ask you to access my phone or computer?’

  ‘Yes, but they’re all password-protected and I told them that. To be completely honest, they didn
’t seem that incredibly interested.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, they asked about you, definitely, but I didn’t feel that I had to deliver any of the detail they requested or they’d expose me. When I said I didn’t know or couldn’t find out, they didn’t press me.’

  Kate thought about this. It was certainly not what she’d expected to hear. ‘Did you tell them about the operation in Istanbul?’

  ‘What operation?’ If his confusion wasn’t genuine, Stuart had turned into an amazingly competent actor.

  ‘“How did it go in Italy?” you asked me. “Istanbul,” I answered.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Kate. I can’t remember that at all.’

  ‘What about when I went to Greece a few days later?’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Did you tell them about that?’

  ‘No! Why would I have done?’

  ‘Did they ask about it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you tell them the former PM had prostate cancer?’

  ‘I didn’t even know he had it until he made that announcement in Downing Street.’

  He was obviously confused now. But not half as disoriented as Kate was. Even as he spoke, her mind was spinning. If Stuart hadn’t told Moscow about Operation Sigma, who the hell had?

  ‘To be completely honest with you,’ he went on, ‘I sometimes wondered why they wanted to recruit me at all.’

  She looked up at him again. ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘When they cornered me – blackmailed me – it all seemed incredibly urgent and elemental. They were brutal. They said they’d show you the video of Imogen and me and destroy our love and marriage. I absolutely believed them. They seemed ruthless, determined. But almost as soon as they’d got what they wanted, it was as if their interest waned. I mean, we’d meet up – about once a month, on average, I suppose – but even then they’d quite regularly postpone one or other rendezvous. Every time I was so relieved and started to convince myself they’d lost interest.

  ‘And even when we did meet, they didn’t seem that interested in what I had to say. It was like going to lunch with a benevolent but distant relation, who was trying to feign interest in everything you do.’

  Kate shook her head. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘It was almost as if the purpose of recruiting me was to tick a box, or meet a target. As I said, we talked about politics and Imogen, who was up and who was down. I discussed policy in some of the areas I was working on, but they weren’t at all interested in that. They asked about you or the Service only rarely and when I said I didn’t know anything, they didn’t pressure me to try to find out more. I didn’t tell them anything they couldn’t otherwise have picked up from watching the news.’

  Kate was looking out of the window. A lorry had pulled up and an enormously fat driver stepped down and waddled towards the diner. She was pretty sure now that they were not being tailed, but she couldn’t make sense of why not. Did they intend to pick her up closer to the border? Perhaps they had a tracking device on Stuart’s car.

  ‘Did I say the wrong thing?’ he asked.

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘For a shot at redemption.’

  ‘It isn’t about that,’ she said, though in a way it was: a test of whether she thought he was capable of telling her the truth. ‘What you say is . . . surprising.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Their disinterest.’

  ‘I know. Sometimes I think it would have been easier if I had been passing vital state secrets. At least that would have felt important. They ruined my – our – life for nothing.’

  Every time Stuart veered into self-pity or self-justification, she felt her hackles start to rise. She could have pointed out, and very nearly did, that it was his decision to screw Imogen Conrad rather than their exploitation of it that had ruined their lives, but what was the point? It made her sound and feel shrewish and embittered, and it was a train of thought and emotion she was trying to choke off.

  Instead, she tried to make sense of what he had said. It occurred to her that Stuart might indeed have been a box-ticking exercise or, more worryingly, a red herring to disguise a much more important agent somewhere in Whitehall or perhaps even MI6. So perhaps Stuart had really not been Viper, after all.

  Which meant, of course, that Viper was still active.

  How easy it was for Moscow to throw Stuart to the wolves when suspicions started to sink in that there was a mole somewhere in the system.

  But even this train of thought rested on a basic premise: that Stuart was telling the truth.

  ‘Did you mean what you said,’ he asked, ‘or was it just a trick to get more information out of me? I wouldn’t blame you if that was the case. I deserve it. But it would help to know.’

  There was a long silence. Kate had to suppress another deep craving for a cigarette as she watched the young girl behind the counter light one and suck the smoke deep into her lungs before blowing it towards the blackened ceiling. The lorry driver had disappeared, apparently to the toilet. ‘I did mean it. In a curious way, despite the awful circumstances, these few hours we’ve spent together have been the greatest peace I’ve known since the day you left.’

  ‘For me, too.’

  ‘But I can’t change the fact that you wounded me deeply. The trust we had, the unique bond, is broken. For ever. We can’t repair that. So, in truth, I don’t know what I want. I miss you. I miss what we had.’

  ‘My sparkling wit.’ He was smiling at her.

  ‘Everything but that. So I . . . don’t know. I’m opening the door. Partly for the kids’ sake. I’m not certain that I’ll ever be able to walk through it. I can’t give you any promises. Perhaps we can find a way back to friendship. I’d hope that was possible. I don’t want to hate you. I don’t want the children to have that bitterness and rancour in their lives. But as to whether something more than that ever develops, I really can’t—’

  ‘That’s enough for now. I don’t want to push it.’ He put his palm over hers. ‘I know it’s going to take a long time.’

  Kate withdrew her hand. If his touch had thrilled her earlier, she now couldn’t bear it. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘What did I say?’

  ‘It’s not what you said, but what you did. I . . .’

  He nodded. ‘I understand. I’m sorry.’ He stared at his hands. She couldn’t help noticing how fine they were, always one of the most attractive things about him. ‘I’m here for you,’ he said. ‘Always. If ever and whenever you need me. That’s all you should know. I have nothing else in my life, and if I never have anything else but your occasional friendship, that’s enough for me.’ He smiled at her, and the genuine love and warmth in his gaze brought tears to her eyes. She brushed them impatiently away.

  ‘How would it work?’ he asked. ‘This friendship, this new life, just to give me some hope to live for.’

  ‘I don’t know. I’d have to do some thinking about it. I’d need to persuade the Service to turn a blind eye to you moving permanently to take up residence in France or Spain or Italy, perhaps.’

  ‘France. It’s closer.’

  ‘Okay. You’d have to work out where you wanted to go. Then we could try to make a plan so the kids could come over once or twice a month. Maybe sometimes I could come along.’

  ‘Sounds great.’ His smile was broad. She found herself smiling back, the warmth spreading through her. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘We’d better get going.’

  Back in the car, most things were the same: the intermittent rain, snow and hail, the poor visibility, the condensation on the windscreen and the gloom of the drab Russian night.

  But something was different. Hope had transformed their demeanour. Kate could hear it in Stuart – he was mentally far away, but humming old songs from the eighties – and feel it in herself. She found her mind roaming through the possibilities she had just outlined. Where would he go? What would he do? She found herself excit
ed already at the prospect of getting on a plane with the kids to spend a weekend with their father in the South of France. Not for love, much less for sex. But the prospect that a true and decent friendship held, well, that was something to hold out for.

  She thought about sex. She’d changed her sanitary towel in the disgusting toilet in the last diner and, while there was certainly some bleeding, it was nothing like as profound as the last time she’d taken the morning-after pill. She allowed her mind to roam worriedly over the possibility that it might not have worked. Christ, what if she really was pregnant?

  All of which led her back to the thought of Sergei’s slaughtered body in that carriage. The momentary sense of wellbeing that had enveloped her evaporated in an instant.

  They barely spoke for the last leg of the journey, as Kate wrestled with what she would tell her superiors back home.

  What did all this change?

  They reached Kate’s hotel on Admiralty Embankment. The weather had closed in to the point where Vasilyevsky Island was barely visible through the driving snow. They got out of the car and, for a moment, neither of them spoke. ‘I’ll follow you up to the border,’ Stuart said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just in case there are any issues. I have a Russian passport, after all. I’m officially a citizen. Maybe that might help.’

  ‘It’s fine.’

  ‘I’d like to, just to see that you’re okay.’

  She nodded. ‘Thank you for your help.’

  ‘It’s been the best twenty-four hours I’ve had since I left. I’ll be high on it for days. I’ll go home and start researching places to live in France. That’s exciting. I mean, really thrilling. It gives me something to live for and I’m grateful.’

  ‘Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves. As I said—’

  ‘I know what you said, love. But this is going to save my life. What happens after that is in the lap of the gods. I understand that.’

  ‘You may have some trouble when you go back.’

  ‘I may, but I don’t care.’

  ‘Will you tell me if they come looking for you?’